Want to eat and drink at our house?

We often participate in an event known as Twitter Taste Live. The way it works is that a certain winery, region or style of wine is featured and samples are sent out to a group of bloggers. At an appointed date and time these bloggers log into the website and chat with the wine makers while tasting their product. As they often send out as many as 8 bottles of wine we sometimes invite friends to join us for these tastings.

Given that there is so much wine to taste we tend to put out a good quantity of food to make sure that the alcohol doesn’t get the upper hand. Ever wonder what it is like to eat and drink at the home of someone so obsessed with food and wine, the way that Amy and I are? You’re in luck today. Here is a culinary travelogue of sorts to give you an idea how we roll.

This is from a recent TTL that featured what was billed as “The Masculine Side of Beaujolais.” Now Beaujolais is far from my favorite wine, in fact if asked for my least favorite style of wine to drink I don’t have to think long before naming it #1. That said, despite drinking CdR for the most part, a couple of the Beaujolais surprised me by being excellent with the meal featured below. The Moulin-a-Vent we sampled was especially good with the quiche. I’m still not a Beaujolais fan, but I am starting to be more open to it.

On to the food.

As my cooking time was limited, I boned (shut up, Beavis) a leg of lamb and did a down-and-dirty butterfly on the meat. We had the grill cranked as high as it would go and made sure it was well-lubricated (I mean it, Beavis, I will kick your ass!). I rubbed my meat well (ok, I’ll give you that one) with dried thyme, rosemary and lavender before seasoning with salt and pepper. I only turned it once to get a good char on the outside.

While the lamb was grilling, I was getting a few other things ready. To get mushrooms browned like this just don’t touch them. When you start to think that they need flipped, don’t even look at them. About the time you’re certain that they must be burnt and ruined, lift one up and check the color. After a few times that will become second nature to you, but it is difficult to do at first.

Some of those mushrooms soon joined bacon, broccoli (lightly sautéed in the bacon grease), shallots and swiss cheese in these quiches.

Once the lamb was done, I wrapped it in foil and let it rest for a good long time. As the next photos show, it came out perfectly medium rare to rare in spots, and as juicy as can be.

Then it was time to pile the lamb on a platter and sauce it all. The sauce was a pan sauce. I deglazed the pan that everything else had been cooked in with stock, and when it was mostly cooked off, I added some red wine and cooked most of it down as well. Then I reduced more stock, seasoned it, took it off the heat and thickened it with some butter, and then added the mushrooms back to the pan.

Lean in and look a little closer…

Then it was time to eat and drink. Finally!

Just an average meal with two of your favorite winos. Did you have enough?

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Joe Power